


to guard against a vainly barking tongue

by funkandwag



Category: Pacific Rim
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 05:11:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/funkandwag/pseuds/funkandwag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gottlieb didn’t want to be here; she had a nice, hot cup of cocoa waiting for her back in the half of the lab not decked with kaiju entrails. -Doctors Geiszler and Gottlieb pay a visit to Hannibal Chau.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to guard against a vainly barking tongue

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from Anne Carson's translation of Sappho's fragment 158.

Gottlieb didn’t want to be here; she had a nice, hot cup of cocoa waiting for her back in the half of the lab not _decked_ with kaiju entrails, which is to say, the orderly, hygienic, non-toxic side of the lab, which is to say, her half, a half that would almost certainly have to cede space to fit the jars and tubes and chambers that contained more of the aforesaid guts, except not yet dissected and tossed into her half.

She hadn’t even wanted to get out of her _chair_.

“Though the price is a bit higher than we’d hoped, Ms. Chau, we will take-”

But Geiszler had come barging in, yelling about how a new shipment had come in, and that ‘for some reason’ Tendo didn’t want to go with her and there needed to be at least one other person for the deal to pass with the marshal’s approval, so she _had_ to come and no, who gives a shit about tepid chocolate water when there’s fucking _kaiju_ instead.

(It had milk in it. Marshmallows, too. A bit of whipped cream, which, with the current rationing system, was worth its weight in gold. None of that instant microwave packet garbage.)

If Geiszler died, though, or got arrested or just plain sacked for this idiocy, she would’ve missed the noise.

“They’re obviously not fresh, I can’t believe-”

So they’d wound their way through the streets of Hong Kong, Geiszler always three or four strides ahead, always turning around to tell her to hurry up, always clearing a path for her with sharp elbows and sharper glares.

Given her gait and Geiszler’s stature, the other passer-by must have looked at them strangely; at the time, however, she only thought about how much she wanted to go home (back to the lab, she meant), where her leg didn’t hurt and how the quicker she was done with this, the sooner she’d be safely ensconced in her data.

So, Gottlieb had tried to walk a bit faster whenever Geiszler asked her.

She leaned over and whispered in Gesizler’s ear: “Shut up. Shut up. You’re going to get us killed. Just say yes.”

When they’d gotten to a tea shop, she had had an inscrutable conversation with the proprietress, that involved a discussion of ‘blue jasmine’ and ‘cyan oolong’. For a moment, Gottlieb was sure Geiszler was such a kaiju groupie, that she had accidentally dragged her to get kaiju-themed tea mixes, entrails and tea merging into yet another thing to add to a collection. No longer was it enough to cut them up or have them needled into her skin; no, now she had to imbibe them as well.

She almost left.

“I thought you wanted me to shut up.”

But, she didn’t know the streets well enough, which meant she stayed the extra few seconds it took for the tea lady to nod at Geiszler and lead her into the storeroom.

“Say yes. Then, _shut up_.”

When she had been an undergraduate, she had been compelled to take biology. She had never cared for the subject itself; too messy, by far. But, the anatomy jars, containing the pig hearts and cow livers, she’d always been fascinated by those. Something about their static nature reminded her of the fixedness of the stars.

The storeroom contained a few stained cardboard boxes (‘TEA’ stamped on them) and a multitude of those same jars, except larger and with organs much more alien and glowy, backlit by the sickly yellow lights lining the bottom.

Geiszler had sighed, like a girl gazing upon her crush from afar.

(If they had left then, she could have still reheated her cocoa without it tasting bitter.)

“After conferring with my most esteemed and most _blind_ colleague, we will take these rotting pieces of garbage you’re calling kaiju specimens. Yes, we most certainly will.”

The woman who had stepped out from behind the largest one was much more arresting. At least two meters tall, she was clothed in red and flanked by cruel-looking men, she drew the eye; probably meant to. Her heels were gold-plated as real gold would have bent beneath her weight; her eyes were hidden behind bottlecap sunglasses, but the left eye must have been marred, if the ragged scar going down her face was anything to go by.

The woman softly introduced herself as ‘Ms. Chau’.

If Gottlieb had met her on the sidewalk, she’d have gladly crossed the street. Geiszler did the opposite: she scurried right on up to her and began to lambast the specimens in the jars.

This one was too old, this one too damaged, and so on. Geiszler grew louder and louder, but the woman, she just smiled gently, revealing gold-plated teeth as well.

“You’re _too_ kind, ladies. Send Pentecost my regards.”

When Geiszler paused for breath, the woman had interjected with a price that would have seemed dear to anyone without a background in the sciences.

Then, they began arguing over the price.

“Just send them with the bill; might make it a little easier to swallow.”

During this haggling, the woman smiled less and less and the men looked more and more tense; when the knife came out-

No, after, it moved too fast for them to see it before the woman had tucked it under Geiszler’s chin, tipping her head back, exposing a long line of soft neck. (Gottlieb thought of Knifehead. She thought of it tattooed in the hollow of Geiszler’s neck, because she never wanted to see that blank space stretched so tight ever again.)

“ _Newton_.” She had never used Newton’s name before (professionalism and all that). But it had just slid off her tongue.

“ _Hermine_. See, I can do it, too, only this time-” She’d pronounced it correctly. By Jove, _she had pronounced it correctly_. And on the the first try, too.

“ _Ladies_. I trust you can escort yourselves out; delivery of the goods will be made as soon as the payment clears.”

 

They left the ‘tea shop’, Newton muttering to herself about ‘cheats’ and ‘scam artists’, Hermine trailing after, the whole left side of her body suddenly awake to the fact that yes, it was in pain. She shouldn’t have stood on it so long and honestly, there had been chairs, or there had to have been chairs, so why hadn’t she sat?

“Dr. Geiszler, we must stop.”

Each step brought agony, but if she paused for too long, pedestrians filled up the gap between her and Newton, and she did not know these streets.

“You know, doc, you really need to be more decisive. First, you can’t figure out if you want me to shut up or not. Now, you can’t figure out if you want to go back to the lab or not. What’s next, you can’t figure out if you, like, like _math_ or not?”

“It’s my _leg_ , doctor. Surely, we can take time out of your busy schedule, seeing as how you’ve taken time out of mine.”

“...There’s this place, about a block from here, that has really comfy seats. I don’t know if they have hot chocolate-” (she resisted the urge to correct her) “-but they have some pretty good noodles.”

A block seemed impossibly far, but the Shatterdome was even farther. Hermine nodded.

 

“The parts didn’t look as bad as you made them out to be.”

“What do _you_ know, Hermi? You’re-”

“Hermine. Mimi, if you’re my mother, Mina, if you’re my girlfriend. But you _will_ use Hermine. Unless the marshal is present in which case-”

“It’s Doctor Gottlieb. And you _will_ use Newt. Especially in front of the marshal.”

“That’s acceptable.”

“...Feeling any better?”

“A bit.”

"Way better than hot chocolate in the lab, right?"

"Not even a little bit."

 


End file.
